Guide to Greener Electronics - Apple, January 2010

Executive summary: Apple continues its climb up the ranking from 11th place in v.12 to 9th in v.13 and is now in 5th place, with a score of 5.1 points, up from 4.9. Apple does best on the toxic chemicals criteria, where it scores most of its points. It scores substantially less on waste and energy. In this evaluation, Apple wins and loses some points on toxic chemicals, but gains on energy.

All Apple products are now free of PVC and BFRs, with the exception of PVC-free power cords in countries where their safety certificationprocess is still ongoing. For this Apple continues to score full marks (doubled). The tightened C1 criterion now requires companies not only to have a chemicals policyinformed by the precautionary principle, but also to show support for bans on PVC vinyl plastic and brominated/chlorinated flame retardants (CFRs/BFRs) during the revisionof the EU’s RoHS Directive (Restriction of Hazardous Substances in electronics).

Apple gains a point for lobbying the EU institutions, but for full marks it needs to provide a public position on its support for immediate restrictions in RoHS 2.0 on organo- chlorine and bromine compounds. It also needs to clarify its stance regarding the position ofthe trade federation TechAmerica on further immediate restrictions and in particular PVC and BFRs. Apple loses a point for providing even less information (on its updatedweb-pages) about its supply chain communications than before. This criterion evaluates disclosure of information flow in the supply chain. Apple also loses a point for minimal information about its future toxic chemical phase-out plans, reducing its communication on this subject on its updated web-pages.